I can’t fix what’s going on in her head
Reliving nightmare days pass, in bed
Wrist suspended from the wall above
Zip-tied by ghosts, false tortured love
Mute tears, a scared girl’s past world
Post-traumatic tragedy sleeps curled
Knees tucked, frail skin, hunched over
Medicated isn’t much better than sober
One scarred arm rests arm over her head,
Memories play back, first-person cassette
Until the arm comes down, wait at her feet
Just soothe her back, ‘till the terrors abate
Date, location, dog, husband, home, bed
Words can’t reach her, repeat them, yet
She looks up, trembling big, brown eyes
Love? She asks, strokes the puppy’s thigh
Lazy tail thumps, content squish-face sigh
Love. All is right. Yet a moment, she cries
Unraveled another thread, unbound lies
Love has no need of noble hero to fix her
Gentle arms heal broken hearts better
1.14.21 - The Land of COVID and Insurrection
Recalled fragments, thought by spider thread
An anxious cursor blinks, retyped a dozen times
NRP echoes unread love letters ‘tween tense
Headlines that dim a frigid sky soon and sooner
The oven never heats, yet it spews sour flame
Pizzas burned in minutes or never thawed.
Woken from a cold dusk haze by bell tones
From one masked, forced smile to another
Twelve more minutes on a cracked screen timer
Fifty degrees higher, listen to the hollow hiss
Who was within six feet for fifteen minutes
Thirty six hours past. Fear, yet hope, for fire
1.13.21 - On Consequence
A week later and we’re all still here
Witness to ruin, result of abject fear
Not of pillars and glass concrete domes
But men, by their own actions, undone
Lives splayed open, shame bared raw
Hastily scribed epitaphs in digital scrawls
Weep not for seditionists betrayed fall
Accountability over divisiveness, for all
1.6.21 - Sue Infamy
Glass broken in a thousand fallen shards
Grey matter shattered by false Red hats
Fates heard these drums beat, once anon
Over distant lands and other gory shores
Maws that guzzled up corn syrup, not history
Gleeful greed-fattened hearts unfurled Rome
Hate wraps words on bricks flung with fervor
Before crumbling hospitals close their doors
Pasty dissonance so loud the towers tremble
While Privileged fan fires, led by Denier's guilt
Cities burn, while heavy clouds refuse to weep,
Apollyon’s mad mouth sewn chaos now reaps
12.17.20 - Pandemic Poetry #3
Made up stories to keep warm countless nights, wasted lives slinking into other skin,
All grown men, turns out, are really, still just boys dreaming of being a race car driver.
We look for ways to distract ourselves from these cold grey days, walling ourselves in
Frozen lakes of silenced quarantined promise, praying this spring thaw will revive her.